Who is Belle Gibson, the former Instagram star who faked cancer?

Belle Gibson is the 26-year-old food and health blogger who faked her cancer and made fraudulent claims she'd donated thousands of crowdfunded money to charity

By Ciara Sheppard

9th February 2018, 4:09 pm

Updated: 9th February 2018, 4:09 pm

BELLE Gibson is an Australian blogger who founded successful food app The Whole Pantry and its accompanying cookbook, while pretending to have cancer.

Gibson claimed to be treating her disease with natural remedies and alternative therapies, all while fraudulently claiming to have donated significant amounts of her income to charities.

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Writers Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano - who uncovered Belle's lies about her fraudulent charity donations - are releasing a book, The Woman Who Fooled the World

Who is Belle Gibson and how did she become famous?

Belle Gibson is a 26-year-old food and health blogger from Launceston, Tasmania, Australia.

Gibson found fame through Instagram, where she built followers in the thousands.

Gibson launched The Whole Pantry application in August 2013, and there were reportedly 200,000 downloads within the first month.

She later signed a deal with Lantern Books for a coffee table cookbook which was published in October 2014.

What did Belle Gibson lie about?

Throughout her fame, Gibson falsely claimed to have terminal brain cancer.

The blogger was lauded inspiring and courageous, and she advocated the use of natural remedies over medication claiming she had "countless times helped others" and "leading them down natural therapy for everything from fertility, depression, bone damage and other types of cancer".

To add insult to injury, Gibson made multiple claims that she'd donated large portions of her income to cancer charities, some of which she raised with help from her Instagram followers, all of which failed to materialise.

News Corp Australia

Australian blogger Belle Gibson blogged about natural remedies to cancer, all while falsely claiming to have the disease; she also falsely claimed to have cancer to crowdfund charity money which was never donated

How did Belle Gibson get caught?

Belle Gibson's lies began to unravel in 2014 when her book was released - the preface stated she has been "stable for two years now with no growth of the cancer", showing inconsistencies with what she had told other media outlets previously.

This unravelled further when who writers - Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano - uncovered her lies about her fraudulent charity donations, details which the two journalists are now exposing further in their book, The Woman Who Fooled the World.

In late April 2015, Gibson gave an interview to The Australian Women's Weekly, where she admitted to having fabricated all her cancer claims.

In September, 2017, Belle Gibson was fined $410,000 (£240,000) for making fraudulent claims about her donations to charity.

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